"An old friend will help you move. A good friend will help you move a dead body." ~ Jim Hayes

If one were to catalog one's friends, how many categories would there be? I was giving this some thought and realized that different parts of my soul connect with different people. Our connections to people are born from circumstance. Not many connect to you in more than one way, but that's okay.

What are your categories?

Here are some of mine:

THE EMPATHETIC LISTENER-There is no limit to the amount of listening this friend is willing to do! It can be the 10th time you've complained about the same thing and she is enraptured each time. She is right there with you. Feeling everything you are sharing. Is that a tear in her eye? She will bring you food. She will sit through bad movies with you. She will drag you out of the house and feed you. (Food is key to being my friend). She will stand on her head to get you to cry because “it will be good for you”...and then she will cry right along with you! She will feel so bad for you that you will start to feel bad for her. She is a huge emotional sponge that absorbs all the misery from your weary body. I have no idea where it all goes. I am afraid to ask. Everybody needs one of these friends.


THE FUN FRIEND- This is not to be confused with friends who make you laugh. The fun friend is willing to do anything if it sounds like fun. Like take your parents' car out for a ride...at age 15...with a brand new drivers permit in her pocket. And we DID have fun! This friend throws a party when her parents are gone...and 100 people show up....cause it's fun. This one has a twinkle in her eye before that fun idea even takes form. It's like there's "fun cement" in their head churning around waiting to take form and solidify into an adventure. This friend is not reckless-they just love to be in the moment, spontaneous, and the main cause of your parent's favorite disciplinary action-grounded for life. I have more than one fun friend and hopefully I have BEEN a fun friend a time or two. It helps if your family has a lawyer on retainer.

THE EXPERT FRIEND-I seem to have collected a plethora of friends who “know things.” I mean women who can rewire things, rearrange music, cook expertly without recipes, balance checkbooks in their head while standing on one foot, arrange a special event that defies the category, rearrange furniture and get it right the first time, and book an amazing vacation with one phone call. Yes, these skills add up to a collective consciousness of super powers…that I don’t have. At first, I thought they were sent to me by the Universe in order to mock me. I had none of these skills, was woefully incompetent at most of them, and felt enslaved to these skilled women. I figured it was my karmic lesson in Humility 101. I was to worship them for an appropriate amount of time and then bow to their superiority. But now, they are stuck with me too, which I find vastly amusing.

THE "YOU LIKE TO DO THE SAME THINGS" FRIEND-These friends are invaluable. They like to scour flea markets at the crack of dawn with you, they will happily go with you to a psychic you heard about, they will watch an entire season of “Glee” with you, and are fascinated by the same things you found in a rock shop. Common interests can’t keep a friendship going forever but they get you started and hopefully, along the way, you find other connections that are even better.

I have other categories but I am saving those for later. What are your categories?


Your buddy,


Adrienne